I don't often talk about voting rights issues in this blog because there is so much other stuff going on, and it can get depressing. Mark Crispin Miller does an excellent job of discussing voting rights issues in his blog. He was one of the most vocal and effective voices in exposing the thefts of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.

However, I just voted with the new system, and it adds new problems to the old one. It uses optical scanners. It could be worse. We could be stuck with touch screen voting which is completely unreliable and unverifiable. However, it is just as easy to hack the optical scanner machines, so their counts are not particularly trustworthy. The optical scanner system at least results in paper ballots that could be hand counted. However, detecting fraud is not easy, and I don't know how difficult it is to get a hand recount.

There can be fraud in hand counted paper ballots too, but it is much more difficult to pull off, and hand recounts can catch some of it. Besides, we have been in a period of joblessness that has lasted over a decade. People need work. Hand counted paper ballots are the method of choice if you want the most reliable and trustworthy elections.

As if that isn't bad enough, there is another problem with voting that has nothing to do with the methods and machines. It has to do with write in voting. If a candidate in the primary doesn't have an opponent who managed to get on the ballot, there is no election at all, which means you can't write in anybody. Primaries where there is only one candidate are the ones where one would generally like to write somebody in the most.

This time, I would have loved to vote against rightist Phonycrats like Andrew Cuomo, Chuck Schumer, and my local congresscritter. Yet, I didn't have the opportunity. I'll have to wait for the general election and vote Green in those races. But, there is something deeply offensive to democracy that you can't vote for the candidate of your choice.

Hand counted paper ballots appear to be banned by federal law, when they should be absolutely mandatory...no exceptions. Write in voting should be available for all elective offices...no exceptions. Our democracy had flaws before the voting machines which have made matters much worse.